Lives of Poor Boys Who Became FamousBolton, Sarah Knowles
History
Lives of Poor Boys Who Became Famous
Bolton, Sarah Knowles
Biography
And yet amid all this honor and success in war, and supremacy in power,
as he was the Dictator, he was so poor that he would wash his red shirt
in a brook, and wait for it to dry while he ate his lunch of bread and
water, with a little fruit. No wonder the Sicilians believed him to be a
second Messiah, and the French that he could shake the bullets from his
body into his loose red shirt, and empty them out at his leisure! The
sailor boy had become the hero of all who loved liberty the world over.
When the war was ended, he resigned his Dictatorship, handed the two
Sicilies over to his sovereign, distributed medals to his devoted
soldiers, and returned to his island home at Caprera, with barely three
dollars in his pocket, having borrowed one hundred to pay his debts. How
rarely does any age produce such a man as Garibaldi!
But Rome was not yet the capital of Italy. The hero could not rest while
the city was governed by a Pope. At last, tired of waiting for the king
to take action, he started with three thousand men for Rome. Victor
Emmanuel, fearing to offend France, if the Pope were molested, sent the
royal troops against Garibaldi at Aspromonte, who badly wounded him,
and carried him to a prison on the Gulf of Spezzia. The people,
indignant at the Government, crowded around him, bearing gifts, and
kissing the hem of his raiment. They even bored a hole in the door of
the prison, that they might catch a glimpse of their idol, as he lay on
his iron bedstead, a gift from an English friend.
After his release and return to Caprera, he visited England in 1864, the
whole country doing him honor. Stations were gaily decorated, streets
arched with flowers, ladies dressed in red; the Duke of Sutherland
entertained him; London gave him the freedom of the city; Tennyson made
him his guest at the Isle of Wight; and crowds made it scarcely possible
for him to appear on the public thoroughfares. He refused to receive a
purse of money from his friends, and went back to Caprera, majestic in
his unselfishness.
Again Italy called him to help her in her alliance with Prussia against
Austria in 1866, and again he fought nobly. The year following he
attempted to take Rome, but was a second time arrested and imprisoned
for fear of Napoleon III. When that monarch fell at Sedan, and the
French troops were withdrawn from the Eternal City, Victor Emmanuel
entered without a struggle, and Rome was free.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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